Philip Rosedale, the mastermind behind virtual reality phenomenon Second Life (SL), predicts that SL technology will make great strides in the near term. If “near-term” is typically defined as under a year, this means users will find that it’s a lot easier to master SL and get into its virtual world, according to Rosedale.

At the moment, Rosedale says it takes about five hours to understand and get your bearings in SL. With software and hardware refinements, he says that it will  take only five to 20 minutes to get the lay of SL’s virtual terrain. That’s about as close to user-friendly as any technophobe can hope for.

While SL has taken technology to new heights, the platform also has been severely criticized for mesmerizing many visitors and turning them into Internet junkies. In June 2007, The Washington Post reported that an animated SL character allegedly raped another character. While some bloggers dismissed the virtual attack as “digital fiction,” police in Belgium, according to newspaper reports, opened an investigation to determine whether an actual crime had been committed.

Commenting on the story at the time, Rosedale said SL is intended for adults, and its activities should be governed by real-life laws, for the time being. "In the ideal case, the people who are in Second Life should think of themselves as citizens of this new place, and not citizens of their countries," he said.

Responding to being asked whether SL can have adverse effects on its visitors, Rosedale recently said that the question of whether people should be sitting in front of their computer screens or out in the physical world with their friends isn’t a relevant question. Says Rosedale, “The question should be, ‘Is SL making you a better person?’ ‘Is it helping you evolve and improve?’ and ‘Is the thing that you are doing in front of the computer more or less challenging and enriching than what you might be doing in the real world?’”

While vocal bloggers have ranted about SL’s addictive qualities, they’ve failed to point out that the Internet itself can be addictive. Rosedale isn’t the culprit. First, his influence isn’t as broad as many think, and second, thousands of computer users were getting hooked on the Internet long before Rosedale entered the picture. And the term “Internet addiction” has been bandied about since the mid-to-late 1990s. Several scholarly papers have been written about it; and in 1998, psychologist Kimberly S. Young authored Caught in the Net: How to Recognize the Signs of Internet Addiction – and a Winning Strategy for Recovery.

Rosedale says that there is legitimate concern about computers being addictive “because there are experiences that you can have on the computer, like playing and immersing yourself in a fighting-based role-playing game12 or 24 hours a day.” The life lesson learned is that “everyone is either an elf or a troll or a human, and the way to get ahead is to kill them,” he says. “This is a monochromatic life lesson that ultimately will not teach you skills that will help you be successful in the real world – nor will it make you a better person.”

SL, however, offers a different kind of Internet experience, Rosedale insists. While some residents have had negative experiences, most report positive and enriching ones, where learning takes places on many different levels. Judging by SL’s statistics, the SL environment is diverse, balanced and conducive to both personal and financial growth. Says Rosedale, “SL represents a greater intellectual challenge than the actual real world around them. And in a few years, we’ll argue that if you are not spending a lot of time in virtual reality, you’re probably impoverishing yourself in some way.”

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The Federal Government has now set its sights on gamers, promising to use its internet censorship regime to block websites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds.

Australia is the only developed country without an R18+ classification for games, meaning any titles that do not meet the MA15+ standard - such as those with excessive violence or sexual content - are simply banned from sale by the Classification Board, unless they are modified to remove the offending content.

So far, this has only applied to local bricks-and-mortar stores selling physical copies of games, but a spokesman for Senator Conroy confirmed that under the filtering plan, it will be extended to downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard.

This means that even Australians who are aged above 15 and want to obtain the adult-level games online will be unable to do so. . It will undoubtedly raise the ire of gamers, the average age of which is 30 in Australia, according to research commissioned by the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia.

Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said the Government clearly went far beyond any mandate it had from the public to help parents deal with cyber-safety.

He said Australians would soon learn this the hard way when they find web pages mysteriously blocked.

"This is confirmation that the scope of the mandatory censorship scheme will keep on creeping," said Mr Jacobs.

"Far from being the ultimate weapon against child abuse, it now will officially censor content deemed too controversial for a 15-year-old. In a free country like ours, do we really need the government to step in and save us from racy web games?"

Senator Conroy's spokesman said the filter would cover "computer games such as web-based flash games and downloadable games, if a complaint is received and the content is determined by ACMA to be Refused Classification". All games that exceed MA15+ are deemed to be RC.

The filtering could also block "the importation of physical copies of computer games sold over the internet which have been classified RC", the spokesman said.

Mark Newton, an ISP engineer and internet filtering critic, said the move to extend the filtering to computer games would place a cloud over online-only games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, which aren't classified in Australia due to their online nature.

He said the online distribution of such games has historically been exempt from customs controls on RC material because they have only ever covered physical articles.

"That exemption is the only reason why multi-player games with user-generated environments are possible in this country; without it, it'd only take one game user anywhere in the world to produce objectionable content in the game environment to make the Australian Government ban the game for everyone," said Newton.

Nine ISPs are trialling the web censorship plan, which will block all content that has been "refused classification" by ACMA. Results of the trials are due to be published in July.

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